فصل 18

18.

In Which a Witch Is Discovered

Xan couldn’t remember the last time she had traveled so slowly. Her magic had been dwindling for years, but there was no denying that it was happening more quickly now. Now the magic seemed to have thinned into a tiny trickle dripping through a narrow channel in her porous bones. Her vision dimmed; her hearing blurred; her hip pained her (and her left foot and her lower back and her shoulders and her wrists and, weirdly, her nose). And her condition was only about to get worse. Soon, she would be holding Luna’s hand for the last time, touching her face for the last time—speaking her words of love in the hoarsest of whispers. It was almost too much to bear.

In truth, Xan was not afraid to die. Why should she be? She had helped ease the pain of hundreds and thousands of people in preparation for that journey into the unknown. She had seen enough times in the faces of those in their final moments, a sudden look of surprise—and a wild, mad joy. Xan felt confident that she had nothing to fear. Still. It was the before that gave her pause. The months leading her toward the end she knew would be far from dignified. When she was able to call up memories of Zosimos (still difficult, despite her best efforts), they were of his grimace, his shudder, his alarming thinness. She remembered the pain he had been in. And she did not relish following in his footsteps.

It is for Luna, she told herself. Everything, everything is for Luna. And it was true. She loved that girl with every ache in her back; she loved her with every hacking cough; she loved her with every rheumatic sigh; she loved her with every crack in her joints. There was nothing she would not endure for that girl.

And she needed to tell her. Of course she did.

Soon, she told herself. Not yet.

The Protectorate sat at the bottom of a long, gentle slope, right before the slope opened up into the vast Zirin Bog. Xan climbed up a rocky outcropping to catch a view of the town before her final descent.

There was something about that town. The way its many sorrows lingered in the air, as persistent as fog. Standing far above the sorrow cloud, Xan, in her clearheadedness, chastised herself.

“Old fool,” she muttered. “How many people have you helped? How many wounds have you healed and hearts have you soothed? How many souls have you guided on their way? And yet, here are these poor people—men and women and children—that you have refused to help. What do you have to say for yourself, you silly woman?”

She had nothing to say for herself.

And she still didn’t know why.

She only knew that the closer she got, the more desperate she felt to leave.

She shook her head, brushed the gravel and leaves from her skirts, and continued down the slope toward the town. As she walked, she had a memory. She could remember her room in the old castle—her favorite room, with the two dragons carved in stone on either side of the fireplace, and a broken ceiling, open to the sky, but magicked to keep the rain away. And she could remember climbing into her makeshift bed and clutching her hands to her heart, praying to the stars that she might have a night free from bad dreams. She never did. And she could remember weeping into her mattress—great gushes of tears. And she could remember a voice at the other side of the door. A quiet, dry, scratchy voice, whispering, More. More. More.

Xan pulled her cloak tightly around her arms. She did not like being cold. She also did not like remembering things. She shook her head to clear away the thoughts and marched down the slope. Into the cloud.

The madwoman in the Tower saw the Witch hobbling through the trees. She was far away—ever so far, but the madwoman’s eyes could see around the world if she let them.

Had she known how to do this before she went mad? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she simply did not notice. She had been a devoted daughter once. And then a girl in love. And then an expectant mother, counting the days until her baby came. And then everything had gone wrong.

The madwoman discovered that it was possible for her to know things. Impossible things. The world, she knew in her madness, was littered with shiny bits and precious pieces. A man might drop a coin on the ground and never find it again, but a crow will find it in a flash. Knowledge, in its essence, was a glittering jewel—and the madwoman was a crow. She pressed, reached, picked, and gathered. She knew so many things. She knew where the Witch lived, for example. She could walk there blindfolded if she could just get out of the Tower for long enough. She knew where the Witch took the children. She knew what those towns were like.

“How is our patient doing this morning?” the Head Sister said to her at the dawning of each day. “How much sorrow presses on her poor, poor soul?” She was hungry. The madwoman could feel it.

None, the madwoman could have said if she felt like speaking. But she didn’t.

For years, the madwoman’s sorrows had fed the Head Sister. For years she felt the predatory pounce. (Sorrow Eater, the madwoman discovered herself knowing. It was not a term that she had ever learned. She found it the way she found anything that was useful—she reached through the gaps of the world and worried it out.) For years she lay silently in her cell while the Head Sister gorged herself on sorrow.

And then one day, there was no sorrow to be had. The madwoman learned to lock it away, seal it off with something else. Hope. And more and more, Sister Ignatia went away hungry.

“Clever,” the Sister said, her mouth a thin, grim line. “You have locked me out. For now.”

You have locked me in, the madwoman thought, a tiny spark of hope igniting in her soul. For now.

The madwoman pressed her face to the thick bars in her thin window. The Witch had left the outcropping and was, right now, limping toward the town walls, just as the Council was carrying the latest baby to the gates.

No mother wailed. No father screamed. They did not fight for their doomed child. They watched numbly as the infant was carried into the horrors of the forest, believing it would keep those horrors away. They set their faces and stared at fear.

Fools, the madwoman wanted to tell them. You are looking the wrong way.

The madwoman folded a map into the shape of a falcon. There were things that she could make happen—things that she could not explain. This was true before they came for her baby, before the Tower—one measure of wheat would become two; fabric worn thin as paper would become thick and luxurious in her hands. But slowly, during her long years in the Tower, her gifts had become sharp and clear. She found bits and pieces of magic in the gaps of the world and squirreled them away.

The madwoman took aim. The Witch was heading for the clearing. The Elders were headed for the clearing. And the falcon would fly directly to where the baby was. She knew it in her bones.

Grand Elder Gherland was, it was true, getting on in years. The potions he received every week from the Sisters of the Star helped, but these days they seemed to help less than usual. And it annoyed him.

And the business with the babies annoyed him, too—not the concept of it, really, nor the results. He simply did not enjoy touching babies. They were loud, boorish, and, frankly, selfish.

Plus, they stank. The one he held now certainly did.

Gravitas was all fine and good, and it was important to maintain appearances, but—Gherland shifted the baby from one arm to the other—he was getting too old for this sort of thing.

He missed Antain. He knew he was being silly. It was better this way, with the boy gone. Executions are a messy business, after all. Especially when family is involved. Still. As much as Antain’s irrational resistance to the Day of Sacrifice had irritated Gherland to no end, he felt they had lost something when Antain resigned, though he couldn’t say exactly what. The Council felt empty with Antain gone. He told himself that he just wanted someone else to hold the wriggling brat, but Gherland knew there was more to the feeling than that.

The people along the walkway bowed their heads as the Council walked by, which was all fine and good. The baby wriggled and squirmed. It spat up on Gherland’s robes. Gherland sighed deeply. He would not make a scene. He owed it to his people to take these discomforts in stride.

It was difficult—no one would ever know how difficult—to be this beloved and honorable and selfless. And as the Council swept through the final causeway, Gherland made sure to congratulate himself for his kind, humanitarian nature.

The baby’s wails devolved into self-­indulgent hiccups.

“Ingrate,” muttered Gherland.

Antain made sure he was seen on the road as the Council walked by. He made brief eye contact with his uncle Gherland—Awful man, he thought with a shudder—and then slipped out behind the crowd and hooked through the gate when no one was looking. Once under the cover of the trees, he headed toward the clearing at a run.

Ethyne was still standing on the side of the road. She had a basket ready for the grieving family. She was an angel, a treasure, and was now, incredibly, Antain’s wife—and had been since a month after she left the Tower. And they loved one another desperately. And they wanted a family. But.

The woman in the rafters.

The cry of the baby.

The cloud of sorrow hanging over the Protectorate like a fog.

Antain had watched that horror unfold and had done nothing. He had stood by as baby after baby was taken and left in the forest. We couldn’t stop it if we tried, he had told himself. It’s what everyone told themselves. It’s what Antain had always believed.

But Antain had also believed that he would spend his life alone, and lonely. And then love proved him wrong. And now the world was brighter than it was before. If that belief could be proved wrong, could not others be as well?

What if we are wrong about the Witch? What if we are wrong about the sacrifice? Antain wondered. The question itself was revolutionary. And astonishing. What would happen if we tried?

Why had the thought never occurred to him before? Wouldn’t it be better, he thought, to bring a child into a world that was good and fair and kind?

Had anyone ever tried to talk to the Witch? How did they know she could not be reasoned with? Anyone that old, after all, had to have a little bit of wisdom. It only made sense.

Love made him giddy. Love made him brave. Love made foggy questions clearer. And Antain needed answers.

He rushed past the ancient sycamore trees and hid himself in the bushes, waiting for the old men to leave.

It was there he found the paper falcon, hanging like an ornament in the yew bush. He grabbed it and held it close to his heart.

By the time Xan reached the clearing, she was already late. She could hear that baby fussing from half a league away.

“Auntie Xan is coming, dearest!” she called out. “Please don’t fret!”

She couldn’t believe it. After all these years, she had never been late. Never. The poor little thing. She closed her eyes tight and tried to send a flood of magic into her legs to give them a little more speed. Alas, it was more like a puddle than a flood, but it did help a bit. Using her cane to spring her forward, Xan sprinted through the green.

“Oh, thank goodness!” she breathed when she saw the baby—red-­faced and enraged, but alive and unharmed. “I was so worried about you, I—”

And then a man stepped between her and the child.

“STOP!” he cried. He had a heavily scarred face and a weapon in his hands.

The puddle of magic, compounded now with fear and surprise and worry for the child that was on the other side of this dangerous stranger, enlarged suddenly into a tidal wave. It thrummed through Xan’s bones, lighting her muscles and tissues and skin. Even her hair sizzled with magic.

“OUT OF MY WAY,” Xan shouted, her voice rumbling through the rocks. She could feel her magic rush from the center of the earth, through her feet and out the top of her head on its way to the sky, back and forth and back and forth, like massive waves pushing and pulling at the shore. She reached out and grabbed the man with both hands. He cried out as a surge hit him square in the solar plexus, knocking his breath clear away. Xan flung him aside as easily as if he was a rag doll. She transformed herself into an astonishingly large hawk, descended on the child, gripped the swaddling clothes in her talons, and lifted the baby into the sky.

Xan couldn’t stay that way—she just didn’t have enough magic—but she and the child could stay airborne over at least the next two ridges. Then she would give food and comfort, assuming she didn’t collapse first. The child opened its throat and wailed.

The madwoman in the Tower watched the Witch transform. She felt nothing as she watched the old nose harden into a beak. She felt nothing as she saw the feathers erupt from her pores, as her arms widened and her body shortened and the old woman screamed in power and pain.

The madwoman remembered the weight of an infant in her arms. The smell of the scalp. The joyful kick of a brand-­new pair of legs. The astonished waving of tiny hands.

She remembered bracing her back against the roof.

She remembered her feet on the rafters. She remembered wanting to fly.

“Birds,” she murmured as the Witch took flight. “Birds, birds, birds.”

There is no time in the Tower. There is only loss.

For now, she thought.

She watched the young man—the one with the scars on his face. Pity about the scars. She hadn’t meant to do it. But he was a kind boy—clever, curious, and good of heart. His kindness was his dearest currency. His scars, she knew, had kept the silly girls away. He deserved someone extraordinary to love him.

She watched him stare at the paper falcon. She watched him carefully unfold each tight crease and flatten the paper on a stone. The paper had no map. Instead it had words.

Don’t forget, it said on one side.

I mean it, said the other.

And in her soul, the madwoman felt a thousand birds—birds of paper, birds of feathers, birds of hearts and minds and flesh—leap into the sky and soar over the dreaming trees.